A Century of War - John Denson (96 Pages)

8/7/2019 A Century of War - John Denson (96 Pages)

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ENTURY OF

R

ENTURY OF

R

COLN, WILSON, AND ROOSEVELT

N V. DENSON

wig

Mises

ute

URN, ALABAMA

N V. DENSON practiced law as a defense trial attorney for many years and in 1988 was inducted into the American College of Trial La

05, he was elected Circuit Judge. He is the editor of and a contrib-utor to two prior books, The Costs of War: Americas Pyrrhic Victorssessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Declineof Freedom. All proceeds from the sale of this book go to wig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.

entury of War was delivered as a lecture in 1997 at the fifteenth anniversary of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Abraham Lincoln and th

and Franklin D. Roosevelt and the First Shot are from Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decledom (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2001). The Calamity of World War I, and Another Century of War? first appeared in the Free-ma

Will to Peace was originally published on LewRock-well.com and Mises.org.

t cover: Photo by Frank Hurley. Permission granted by the Australian War Memorial, negative number E01220.

yright 2006 Ludwig von Mises Institute All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever withoutmission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews. For information write the Ludwig von Mises Institute, 518 West Magnolianue, Auburn, Alabama 36832; www.mises.org.

N: 10 digit: 1-933550-06-6

N: 13 digit: 978-1-933550-06-0

S BOOK IS DEDICATED TO

ourageous individuals

will struggle against the

s, certain vested interests,the power of the State to

te a will to peace in the

ty-first century.

NOWLEDGMENT

uld like to thank, Donna Moreman, for all the extra hours she has worked, in addition to her regular duties as my legal secretary, in ordereches, books, and lectures. I also want to thank Judy Thommesen, with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, who served as editor for this booer wise counsel and helpful suggestions. Thanks also to Chad Parish, with the Mises Institute, for the cover design that so vividly showsors of war. Finally, I want to thank Lew Rock-well, not only for his friendship since we met in 1982, but for his commitment to Mrs. Ludwiges to create the Mises Institute and to devote his life to promoting the ideas of her brilliant husband. The Mises Institute has been a fantaess and I am very proud to have been associated with it since the beginning.


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NTENTS

FACE ....................................................................................9

CENTURY OF WAR ..........................................................17

BRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE FIRST SHOT .........................33

HE CALAMITY OF WORLD WAR I .....................................97

RANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT AND THE FIRST SHOT ..............101

NCOLN AND ROOSEVELT: AMERICAN CAESARS...............173

NOTHER CENTURY OF WAR? ..........................................181

HE WILL TO PEACE ........................................................187

ENDIX: ROOSEVELT, PEARL HARBOR,

THE RED CROSS ............................................................195

OMMENDED READINGS ....................................................197

LIOGRAPHY .......................................................................201

EX....................................................................................209

FACE

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY MUST take the path less traveled and reverse the direction taken in the war-torn twentieth century, the blory. When the First World War, where ten million soldiers were killed, evolved into the Second World War, where fifty million people werxperienced the concept of total war. A large percentage of the fifty million were civilians (women and children) killed by British and Ameaft which dropped bombs on nonmilitary targets in order to demoral-ize the enemy. In other words, the end justified the means.

Second World War ended with the first atomic bombs being dropped on Japan, despite the fact that for months Japan had been offerinender if they could keep their Emperor.

offer was refused because of Roosevelts unconditional surrender policy which Truman also adopted. After America dropped the bomRussia had been in the war for six days, we accepted their surrender and let the Japanese keep their Emperor.

war was followed by the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials which established, for the future, that the political and military leaders who lose a wied by the victors and then executed. This established the pattern that no military or political leader will be willingto lose a war, therefore

uring it will esca-late into a total war to avoid losing and being executed.

twenty-first century, I believe, will be the nuclear century since this amazing source of energy, i.e., uranium, holds the promise of futureperity for the rapidly growing industrialized world.

ever, if nuclear power is used in a total war, we literally face 9

ENTURY OF WAR: LINCOLN, WILSON, AND ROOSEVELT

possible extinction of the human race, or at least the destruction of Western Civilization.

must learn to avoid war and develop a general will to peace. I believe the key to this development is to learn the truth about the real caus

cts of wars so that we can see through the false propaganda which is used by political leaders to convince us to go to war.

advocating the careful study of history for the purpose of developing this will to peace. One of my favorite history professors is Ralph Ratells the story of asking his college students,

at is history? and one of the students replied, Its just one damn thing after another. Henry Ford said, History is bunk,

ning that it is usually false and misleading rather than unimportant when correctly written. In Ambrose Bierces Devils Dic-tionary, he dery as an account, mostly false of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly foolever, when history is written truthfully I believe that Bolingbroke gave the best definition,

ory is philosophy teaching by example. If we can read history by looking at past events to determine what ideas were being followed, whow those ideas worked out in practice and learn lessons from the experience of others and avoid the same mistakes. The extremeortance of history and its study was cogently stated by Patrick Henry, I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the la

erience. I know of no other way of judging the future but by the past.

big question about history is usually What are the true facts? You cannot always rely on eyewitnesses since they may have a bias. So


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es and writings made contemporaneously are true but are not found for many years, decades, or centuries. It is almost impossible for hritten without the writers judgment or bias being expressed in the form of an interpretation. Therefore, history is always evolving and it iys subject to revision by better and more reliable evidence.

brings us to the controversial question of What is revisionism? Usually when some establishment position is questioned as to its autha new version is proposed, it is 10

FACE

demned as revisionism or an effort to distort the truth, when in fact, the revisionism may state the correct facts. The best definition ofionism was stated by one of Americas foremost revisionist historians, Harry Elmer Barnes, Revisionism is bringing history into accordacts. In George Orwells famous novel Nineteen Eighty-Fourhe depicts revisionism as a word of opprobrium and demonstrates it wi

ernmental depart-ment entitled The Ministry of Truth where history is intentionally falsified to obscure the past because people who do

w the truth about the past, and cannot learn lessons from history, are more easily controlled by the government, not only in the present, bue. Therefore, when the word revisionism is used, it must be determined in what context it is being used, i.e., whether the definition statees, or in the sense of George Orwells novel.

of the most dramatic examples of true revisionism concerns the Donation of Constantine. This was a document widely circulated foruries throughout Western Civilization which was alleged to be a document composed by the Emperor Constantine (272337) which maf Rome and the western part of the Roman Empire to Pope Sylvester while the eastern part of the empire was established at the capitastantino-ple. This alleged donation constituted the cornerstone of the papal claim for both religious and secular power in Rome, which iseasons, for instance, that Charlemagne traveled to Rome to be crowned as emperor by the Pope on Christmas day in 800. It was not un

enth century that Lorenzo Valla (140757) exposed this document as a complete forgery, thereby causing tremendous repercussions intern Civilization from that time forward relating to both the secular and papal sover-eignty and power of Rome.

n regard to war, however, that most revisionism becomes necessary because truth is almost always the first casualty of war.

ost wars throughout history, the political leaders first need to gain the support of the citizens who must fight, pay taxes, and sacrifice theibtain popular approval leaders have often used false propaganda to state the reasons for the war. False 11


aganda often continues throughout the war to instill hatred of the enemy and finally, it is used at the end to prove that it was a just war, thying the sacrifices made by the citizens. Since winners write the history, the false propaganda used from the beginning to the end is oftpted as the true history of the war.

clear and dramatic incident relating to war and good revisionism was an incident known as the Katyn Forest massacre which was usng World War II, and in many history books since that date, to show the Germans atrocities. The Katyn Forest is located in modern-dayrus. In September of 1939 both Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland and occupied it jointly. It was reported later that thousan

sh army officers, political leaders, intellectuals, and teachers had been rounded up, massacred, and buried in mass graves. In 1943 a gdiscovered which contained over 15,000 of these missing persons, piled on top of each other and each had a single bullet hole in the b

head. The wartime propaganda of America, the British, and the Soviets was that the Germans were guilty of this atrocity. The graves of taining persons have never been disclosed or discovered.

allegation of mass murder helped to fuel hatred toward the Germans, as did other false allegations, all clearly revealed in The Propaga

riors: Americas Crusade Against Nazi Germanyby Clayton D. Lauria and Twas a Famous Victory: Deception andPropaganda in thnst Germany, by Benjamin Colby. During the 1970s and 80s I read various accounts that cast doubt about the truth of the wartime proping to the Katyn Forest massacre. But it was not until 1989 that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev produced the actual documents whichaled conclusively that the Soviet secret police, under the speci fic orders of Joseph Stalin in 1940, murdered 21,587 Polish enemies of et state and buried most of them in this particular grave. Gorbachev did not reveal any documents showing the location of the remaininges.1

e plaque at this grave site blaming the Germans for the Katyn Forest atrocity was removed once this information was made known.

FACE

false propaganda against the Germans in World War I is shown in detail by an excellent book entitled Falsehood in Wartime:Propaga

of the First World Warby Arthur Ponsonby, a member of the British Parliament. False propaganda was also employed by governmentng up to and during World War II. A study of the false propaganda in World War II shows that no lie was too large to prevent its use agar and no crime of Stalin was too large to prevent its being hidden from the American public.

now know since new documents have been discovered by the research of R.J. Rummel and revealed in his books Death byGovernme

er Kills that Stalin was the worlds foremost murderer and that Mao of China was number two, making communism the deadliest politicasophy in all history. At the end of World War II far more people were living under tyranny than before the war. This tyranny was communiever, the war was labeled as a great victory over tyranny because of the defeat of Hitler.

of the purposes of this book is to show the importance of revisionism because I believe it is one of the main keys to developing a geneeace for the future. The following essays were written at various times and for different purposes, i.e., book reviews, a speech, and thenooks. They all relate to history primarily involving the real causes of war as well as the actual results. A study of history like this, I believe


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make people more aware of the fabricated propaganda that appears as history today, not only in the history books, but often in the newa about the causes and the effects of war. Americans, in particular, seem to be very nave about the real causes and effects of wars and

ccept at face value the reasons given by politicians. If Americans would be more skeptical and question the reasons given by politiciansr into war, and further insist that only Congress can declare war (which the Constitution specifically requires), rather than letting presiden

to wars, we will see fewer wars. Also, if history is studied to understand the realcauses and effects of war and the loss of freedom that n in winning a war, this would increase that skepticism.


xcellent introduction to revisionism can be obtained by reading a book by Harry Elmer Barnes entitled Revisionism: A Keyto Peace a

er Essays, which was published by the Cato Institute in 1980. Another good introduction to the subject is James J.

ins Revisionist Viewpoints: Essays in a Dissident Historical Tradition. These books will introduce the reader to many other detailed hh delve into the real background of American wars. Much excellent research has been done and published, but the public-at-large is noese books because there are certain gatekeepers such as the Council on Foreign Relations, who have reasons to prevent this knowledhing the general public.

World War I there was a tremendous amount of revisionism showing the false propaganda used by President Wilson and others to gerica into that war. After the war a thorough investigation also showed there were certain economic interests of bankers and munition mencouraged the war for their own financial profit, which was the first real indication of the industrial-military-banking complex. Congressstigations that followed exposed the abuse of power that took America into World War I and resulted in the Neutrality Acts being passedevent future unnecessary or unjust American wars.

he time of the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, public opinion polls showed that over 80 percent of the American public waosed to entering another European war.

ok the dramatic event of the attack on Pearl Harbor to shift public opinion overwhelmingly to support our entry into the war.

public was unaware of the evidence that we now have that Roosevelt had provoked the attack on Pearl Harbor and actually withheldmation from the military commanders stationed there, which, if furnished to them, would have probably prevented the attack. There is als

ellent revisionist history that President Lincoln provoked the firing on Fort Sumter for economic reasons having nothing to do with the abery. Two essays in this book address these subjects of provoking the first shot in some detail.

FACE

Americans become aware of this revisionist history, it could very well create a general will to peace. There are some hopeful signs that tkeepers will not be able to prevent revisionist history from reaching the general public because of the internet. Of course, the internet ca

ain false as well as truthful information, so much discretion will be required. Another hopeful sign is the use of the Freedom of Informatioof the best and most recent disclosures of Roosevelts acts provoking the attack at Pearl Harbor is contained in a book published in th

0 entitled Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and PearlHarborby Robert D. Stinnett which is discussed fully in the essay on Roosevews herein. Stinnetts book is dedicated to the late Congressman, John Moss (D., CA) who was the author of the Freedom of InformationStinnett states that without this Act, the information revealed in this book would never have surfaced.

lly, the last essay in this book is about the Christmas Truce in which the German and British soldiers realized that by the first Christmasd War I, they could not figure out why they were fighting each other. The soldiers, on both sides of the trenches, in direct disregard of ord

aternize with the enemy, and probably facing certain court-martial for their actions, put down their arms and celebrated Christmas togeth4.

n the officers saw that they could not prevent the Christmas celebration they joined with the soldiers. The entire twentieth century would hn very different if the war had ended at that point. This essay contains the statement by Sir Kinglsey Wood, a cabinet minister in Britain dd War II who stated during a debate in the House of Commons on March 31, 1930, his recollection of being a participant in the Christm

e:

fact is that we did it, and I then came to the conclusion that I have held very firmly ever since, that if we had been left by ourselves there er have been another shot fired.

a fortnight the truce went on. We were on the most friendly terms, and it was only the fact that we were being controlled by others that maessary for us to start trying to shoot one 15


her again. He blamed the resumption of the war on the grip of the political system which was bad, and I and others who were there at trmined there and then never to rest

Until we had seen whether we could change it. But they could not.

book is not advocating either pacifism or isolationism. If a rogue nation launches an unprovoked attack then those attacked must defenmselves. But as is so often the case, history reveals the first shot was provoked by the other side and that the war was unnecessary and


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moted by certain insiders for hidden reasons. We have now reached the point in the nuclear age however, when we can no longer take thce of going to war because our own leaders may have secretly provoked the attack, nor can we afford to go to war for reasons other tha

e which are just and for the defense of our own country. I believe that the survival of the human race may well depend upon developing ace in the nuclear age. This book, hopefully, will contribute to creating that general will to peace by showing the benefits of true revisionismimportant it is to learn the lessons of history in order to prevent wars in the future.

ENTURY OF WAR

MOST ACCURATE DESCRIPTION of the twentieth century is

War and Welfare Century. This century was the bloodiest in all history. More than 170 million people were killed by governments with ton being killed in World War I and fifty million killed in World War II. In regard to the fifty million killed in World War II, it is significant that nercent were innocent civilians, mainly as a result of the bombing of cities by Great Britain and America.

number of fifty million deaths does not include the estimated six to twelve million Russians killed by Stalin before World War II, and the son people he ki lled after the war ended when Roosevelt delivered to him one-third of Europe as part of the settlement conferences. Geockers excellent book Roosevelts Road to Russia describes the settlement conferences, such as Yalta, and shows how Roosevelt enhamunism in Russia and China through deliberate concessions which strengthened it drastically, while Nazism was being extinguished inmany.

nconceivable that America could join with Stalin as an ally and promote World War II as the good war, against tyranny or totalitarianismand American aid made Soviet Russia into a super military power which threatened America and the world for the next forty-five years. ered China to the communists and made it a threat during this same period of time.

horror of the twentieth century could hardly have been predicted in the nineteenth century, which saw the eighteenth 17


ury end with the American Revolution bringing about the creation of the first classical liberal government. It was a government founded uprint in a written constitution, which allowed very few powers in the central government and protected individual liberties even from the vomajority. It provided for the ownership and protection of private property, free speech, freedom of religion, and basically a free-market ecno direct taxes.

political factions united behind the first administration of President Washington to proclaim a foreign policy based upon noninterventioneutrality in the affairs of other nations, which remained the dominant political idea of America for over a hundred years.

se ideas of classical liberalism quickly spread to the Old World of Europe and at the end of the eighteenth century erupted into a differevolution in France, although a revolution in the name of liberty. The new ideal, however, adopted in the French Revolution was equality e and it attempted to abolish all monarchy throughout Europe. The ideas of classical liberalism were twisted and distorted, but neverthee spread by force throughout Europe, thereby giving liberalism a bad name, especially in Germany; and this was accomplished by acripted French army.

nineteenth century largely remained, in practice, a century of individual freedom, material progress, and relative peace, which allowed gelopments in science, technology, and industry. However, the intellectual ferment toward the middle of the nineteenth century and thereafdedly toward collectivism. In about 1850 the great classical liberal John Stuart Mill began to abandon these ideas and adopt socialism,t other intellectuals. After the brief FrancoPrussian War of 187071, Bismarck established the first welfare state while creating the natmany by converting it from a confederation of states, just as Lincoln did in America. From this point up until World War I most Germanectuals began to glorify the state and collectivist ideas. They ignored one lone voice in Germany, a lyric poet by the name of Johann Chdrich Hlderlin, 18

ENTURY OF WAR

died in 1843. He stated, What has made the State a hell on earth has been that man has tried to make i t his heaven.1 Hegel and Fichediately come to mind.

GREATEST TRAGEDY

ly, the greatest tragedy of Western civilization erupted with World War I in 1914. It may be the most senseless, unnecessary and avoidaster in human history. Classical liberalism was thereby murdered, and virtually disappeared, and was replaced by collectivism which reintellectually and in practice throughout the remainder of the twentieth century. The ideas of socialism began to take over the various

ernments of the world following World War I. Socialism was not initially a mass movement of the people but was a movement created byectuals who assumed important roles in the governments ruled by the collectivist politicians.

e I could quote from numerous political and intellectual leaders throughout the war and welfare century, I have chosen one who summednant political thoughts in the twentieth century. He was the founder of fascism, and he came to power in 1922 in Italy. In 1927 Benito Mu

ed: Fascism . . . believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. . . . War alone brings up to its highest tension all humgy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it. . . . It may be expected that this will be a century ofority, a century of the Left, a century of Fascism. For the nineteenth century was a century of individualism. . . . [Liberalism always signify


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idualism], it may be expected that this will be a century of collectivism, and hence the century of the State. . . . For Fascism, the growth o

ire, that is to say, the expansion of the nation, is the 1 The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, vol. 10: S ocialism and War: Essays,Docuews, Bruce Caldwell, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 175.


ential manifestation of vitality, and its opposite is a sign of decay and death.2

DING PRINCIPLES

solinis statement bears closer study because it dramatically states some of the guiding principles of the twentieth century:

states that perpetual peace is neither possible, nor even to be desired.

stead of peace, war is to be desired because not only is war a noble activity, but it reveals the true courage of man; it unleashes creativgy and causes progress. Moreover, war is the prime mover to enhance and glorify the state. War is the principal method by which colle

e achieved their goal of control by the few over the many. They actually seek to create or initiate wars for this purpose.

dividualism, the philosophy practiced in the nineteenth century, is to be abolished and, specifically, collectivism is to rule the twentieth ce

ascism is recognized as a variation of other forms of collectivism, all being part of the Left, as opposed to individualism.

s not until the Red Decade of the 30s, and the appearance of Hitler, that leftist intellectuals and the media began to switch Fascism oncal spectrum to the Right so that the good forms of collectivism, such as socialism, could oppose the

emism on the Right which they said was fascism.

founder of fascism clearly realized that all of these collectivist ideas, i .e., socialism, fascism and communism, belonged on the Left andosed to individualism. Fascism is not an extreme form of individualism and is a part of the Left, or collectivism.

nito Mussolini, The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism, in Fascism: An Anthology, Nathanael Greene, ed. (New York: Thomas Ywell, 1968), pp. 41, 4344.

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ideals upon which America was founded were the exact opposite of those expressed by Mussolini and other collectivists on the Left. WAmerica, in the twentieth century, not a bulwark for freedom to oppose all of these leftist ideas?

didnt the ideas of the American Founders dominate the twentieth century and make it the American Century of Peace and Prosperityad of the ideas of the Left dominating and making it the War and Welfare Century? The failure of the ideas of the Founders of Americnant in the twentieth century was certainly not because America had been conquered by the force of arms of some foreign leftist enemy

U.S. EMPIRE

need to learn the real reasons why America abandoned the principles of its Founding Fathers and allowed this tragedy to occur. We murmine why America became influenced by leftist thoughts, the ideas of empire, and the ideas of glorification of the state. How did Amerbecome an empire and an interventionist in World Wars I and II and help create the war and welfare century in which we now live?

can begin by examining a quotation from one of the main leaders of America in the nineteenth century and the answer will become appastatement was made in 1838 by a rather obscure American politician at the time who would become world famous in 1861:

hat point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transat-lantic militar

ep the Ocean, and crush us at a blow?

er! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth . . . could not by force, take a drink from the Ohie a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.3

e Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy P. Basler, ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 195355), vol. 1, p. 109.


ham Lincoln is the author of these words and he concluded his statement with the following:

struction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

HER ABRAHAM


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ham Lincoln himself became the principal instigator of Americas suicide. It was not a foreign foe, but it was a war, even a victorious ed the Founderss dreams in America.

ever, leftist intellectuals have never revealed to the American people the real cause and effect of the American Civil War, and instead hlaimed it a noble war to free the slaves, and therefore, worth all of its costs. In fact, it was a war to repudiate the ideas of a limited cen

ernment and it moved America towards a domestic empire, which led inevitably to a foreign empire several decades later.

can see photographs of Lincoln near the end of the war which show signs of strain. However, I think the strain was due mainly to the fact end of this long and costly war, he understood that it had been unnecessary and that he had acted initially and primarily only to secure theomic and political domination of the North over the South. At the end of the war, President Lincoln finally understood the real costs as ris statement:

result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the cou

eavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until wealth is aggregated into the hands of a few and the Repubroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of the war.5

d.

ncis Nielson, The Makers of War(New Orleans, La.: Flanders Hall, 1987), pp. 5354; emphasis added.

ENTURY OF WAR

r key individuals also recognized the real effect of the American Civil War. One of these was the great historian of liberty, Lord Acton, we to a prominent American, Robert E.

immediately after the war and stated: I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secesme with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. . . .

efore, I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lomond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.6

S VISION

a careful analysis of the results of the Civil War, General Lee replied to Lord Acton in his letter dated December 15, 1866: I can only sae I have considered the preservation of the constitutional power of the General Government to be the foundation of our peace and safetye and abroad, I yet believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people, not only essential tostment and balance of the general system, but the safeguard to the continuance of a free government. I consider it as the chief source olity to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroadand despotic a

be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.7

clearly saw the Norths victory as the beginning of the growth of empire at home, the loss of freedom to Americans and the destruction onal ideas of our Founders. He also saw 6 Essays in the History of Liberty: Selected Writings of Lord Acton, J. Rufus Fears, ed. (IndianLiberty Classics, 1985), vol. 1, p. 277.

d., p. 364; emphasis added.


the domestic empire would lead to an empire abroad. Consolidation of power into the central government is the basic prem-ise of collet was the basic idea the Constitution attempted to avoid. After the creation of the domestic American empire as a result of the Civil Waafter the next three decades, America specifically repudiated its one-hundred-year old foreign policy and initiated the Spanish-Americedly to free Cuba. We now know, however, that the original and ultimate purpose of the war was to take the Philippine Islands away fromder to provide coaling stations for the trade with China which was considered by many American economic interests to be essential toricas expansion.

inley ordered the American warships sent to the Philippines at approximately the same time he sent the battleship Maine to Cuba anducted the American Navy to support the Philippine rebels against their Spanish rulers. McKinley asked Congress to declare war becau

sinking of the battleship Maine, but we know today that the explosion occurred within the ship and, therefore, could not have been done bnish. In the Philippines, the native rebels were successful in throwing off their Spanish rulers and were aided in their effort by the Americy.

e the rebels had succeeded, McKinley ordered the American guns turned upon the rebels, murdering them in cold blood by the thousandched their islands away from them. McKinley then ruled as a military dictator without authority from Congress.

, without any authority from Congress, he sent five thousand marines into China to help put down the Boxer Rebellion, which was an effo

Chinese to expel foreigners from their own soil. McKinley joined with other European nations in seeking the spoils of China and sacrificericas integrity and her right to be called a leader for freedom.


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came the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century which was Americas late entry into World War I. Americas entry drastically changednce of power of the original con-tenders in the war and resulted in the horrible Treaty of Versailles, which paved the road to World War II

ENTURY OF WAR

PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT

ricas entry into World War I was a result of the so-called Progressive Movement which worshiped the idea of democracyper se, and wpread it throughout the world, by force if necessary. It was this movement which in one year, 1913, caused monumental changes in Amee name of attacking the rich for the benefit of the poor.

first change was the creation of the Federal Reserve System allegedly to control the banks, but instead it concentrated power into the hite few unelected manipulators. The Sixteenth Amendment allowed for the income tax and it was alleged that the Amendment only attacHowever, in World War I, the tax was raised and expanded and has become the most oppressive feature of American life in this centu

ay it causes middle-class Americans to work approximately five months of every year just for the government before they earn anything fmselves.

third drastic change was the Seventeenth Amendment which gave power to the people by letting them elect U.S. Senators rather thane legislatures. The Founding Fathers had devised a system of state legislatures electing U.S. Senators in order to give the states the abain and limit the power of the federal government.

Progressive Movement also promoted the personification of Isabel Patersons Humanitarian with a Guillotine, described in her book,

of the Machine, by electing President Woodrow Wilson. He was a naive, idealistic, egomaniac, who took America into World War I. Ho play a part in creating the League of Nations and help design the new structure of the world, thereby spreading the democratic gospe

on allowed the House of J.P. Morgan to become the exclusive agent for British purchases of war materials in America and further allowgan to make loans and extend credit to the allies. Eventually, Wilson made the U.S. Government assume all of the Morgan debt and issurty Bonds so the American tax-payers could help pay for it. When the allies refused to repay their debt, America stood on the precipicenomic disaster, 25


h was another major factor in Wilsons decision to enter the war. However, it was World War I and its destabilization of the economies otern nations which led directly to the disaster of the Depression of 1929. There was no failure of the free market or the ideas of freedomo this economic disaster. It was caused by government interference in the market primarily resulting from World War I and the reaction ous governments to that war.

R FEVER

he war fever spread and the war drums beat, few people paid attention to such editorials as appeared in the Commercialand Financiarnalwhich stated: If war is declared, it is needless to say that we shall support the government. But may we not ask, one to another, befoul final word is spoken, are we not by this act transforming the glorious Republic that was, into the powerful Republic that is, and is to bet we not admit that we are bringing into existence a new republic that is unlike the old?8

on, like Polk, Lincoln, and McKinley before him, deceitfully made it appear that the alleged enemy started the war by firing the first shot.

man embassy warned Secretary of State Bryan that the British passenger ship, the Lusitania, was carrying illegal weapons and munitiotherefore a proper and perfectly legal target for submarines. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan tried to get Wilson to warn Ameo sail on this ship but he refused to do so, seeing that the opportunity for the loss of American lives would present him with an apparentntering the war. Wilson failed to give the warning and Bryan later resigned. Over one hundred Americans were killed when a German

marine sank the Lusitania.

art D. Brandes, Wardogs: A History of War Profits in America (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997), p. 141.

ENTURY OF WAR

TORY OVER FREEDOM

World War I ended, and much like the regret expressed by Lincoln at the end of the Civil War, President Wilson looked back to the habrought on America and saw part of the true nature of World War I. In an address at St. Louis, Missouri on September 5, 1919, Presideon stated: Why, my fellow-citizens, is there any man here, or any womanlet me say, is there any child here, who does not know that thear in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry? . . . This war, in its inception, was a commercial and industrial war. It was nocal war.9

sad to contemplate the loss of liberty caused to Americans by the victorious wars we have fought when you look back and see that almem were unnecessary to defend Americans or their freedom, and were largely economically instigated.

many instances, the president provoked the other side into firing the first shot so it was made to appear that the war was started by Amed enemy. Not only did Polk, Lincoln, McKinley, and Wilson do this, but also later, Roosevelt would do it with Pearl Harbor and Johnson


10/96

at the Gulf of Tonkin for the Vietnam War.

not truly a study of history to speculate on what might have happened if America had not entered World War I, but here are some veryonable, even probable, consequences if America had followed the advice of i ts Founders: 1. Almost certainly there would not have beeessful Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, giving communism a homeland from which to spread throughout the world.

negotiated treaty between Germany and France and Great Britain, when all were wounded but undefeated, would have prevented the de Treaty of Versailles, the greatest single 9 The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Arthur S. Link, ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University P0), vol. 63, pp. 4546.


edy of World War I. Without Americas entry there would have been a treaty negotiated with co-equal partners, similar to the way the Coenna settled the Napoleonic Wars in 181516, with a defeated France still represented at the table by Tallyrand, and where a sincere emade to promote peace rather than cause a future war.

Treaty of Versailles excluded Germany and Russia from the negotiations and declared Germany alone guilty of causing the war. It saddtremendous payments for war damages and took away much of her territory. The Treaty of Versailles paved the way for Hitler whose sue democratically from the German people who wanted to throw off the unfair Treaty.

out the rise of communism in Russia and Nazism in Germany, World War II probably would not have occurred.

HABSBURG MONARCHY

nt to add a footnote here relative to the settlement of World War I as it relates to the Habsburg Monarchy. In his excellent book entitled Lisited, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn reveals that President Wilson probably was unaware of the wisdom of Disraelis words: The maintenAustrian Empire is necessary to the independence and, if necessary, to the civilization and even to the liberties of Europe. The book poPresident Wilson had as one of his main foreign-policy representatives a confirmed socialist preacher by the name of Reverend Georgon.

Habsburg Monarchy petitioned Wilson to negotiate a separate peace treaty in February of 1918, before the war ended later in Novembas its representative Professor Heinrich Lammasch to meet with the American representative Reverend Herron. They spent two days tProfessor Lammasch revealed the plan to create a federated political body which was entirely in keeping with one of Wilsons Fourteehat individual nations (ethnic groups) would be

orded the freest opportunity of autonomous development.

book states:

ENTURY OF WAR

ng the night he [Herron] began to wrestle with this temptation, as Jacob wrestled with God near the Yabbok. By morning he knew thaed complete victory over himself; Lammasch had been nothing but an evil tempter. No!

Habsburg Monarchy had to go because the Habsburgs as such were an obstacle to progress, democracy, and liberty. Had they remainer the whole war would have been fought in vain.10

ourse, one of the winners of the war, Great Britain, was allowed to keep its monarchy.

SHEVIKS AND THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

book continues with an interesting event relating to Reverend Herron after his travels in Europe. He wrote to the socialist, Norman Thom

0 and stated that: The Bolsheviks

e bad, but the future civilization of Europe is coming out of Russia and i t will be at least an approach to the Kingdom of Heaven when ites.11 The leftist bias and bent of mind of Wilsons representative is crystal clear and communism is proclaimed to be the great politicaem of the future.

e are many important lessons that the twentieth century, this War and Welfare Century, should teach us. One of these is summed up b

er in his excellent book entitled War andthe Rise of the State wherein he states that the New Deal was the only time in U.S. history wheer of the central state grew substantially in the absence of war.12 He concluded that: Throughout the history of the United States, war hprimary impetus behind the growth and development of the central state. It has been the lever by which presidents and other national offe bolstered the power of the state in 10Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, LeftismRevisited: From de Sade and Marxto Hitler and Pol Potshington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1990), p. 214.

id., p. 216.

ruce D. Porter, War and the Rise of the State: The Military Foundationsof Modern Politics (New York: Free Press, 1994), p. 278.


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ace of tenacious popular resistance. It has been a wellspring of American nationalism and a spur to political and social change.13

same lesson is contained in a warning issued by the great champion of liberty and student of American democracy, Alexis de Tocqueved America in the early part of the nineteenth century that:

rotracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country. . . . War does not always give over democratic communities toernment, but it must invariably and immeasurably increase the powers of civil government; it must almost compulsorily concentrate the d

men and the management of all things in the hands of the administration. If it does not lead to despotism by sudden violence, it preparemore gently by their habits. All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and thtest means to accomplish it.

is the first axiom of the science.14

Porter and Tocqueville are warning us that even victorious wars cause the loss of freedom due to the centralization of power into the

ernment. Another lesson is that democracyper se will not protect our freedom or individual liberty. I have heard college students ask thestion: Why did the Greeks, who invented democracy, remain so critical of i t? The answer, of course, is that democracy, without properaints and limitation of powers as provided in the original American Constitution, can be just as tyrannical as a single despot. F.A. Hayepoint when he stated:

e can be no doubt that in history there has often been much more cultural and political freedom under an autocratic rule than under someocraciesand it is at least conceivable 13Ibid., p. 291.

exis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Alfred A.

pf, 1980), vol. 2, pp. 26869.

ENTURY OF WAR

under the government of a very homogeneous doctrinaire majority, democratic government might be as oppressive as the worsttorship.15

TING THE STATE

should learn from the war and welfare century that the greatest discovery in Western civilization was that liberty could be achieved only tproper and effective limitation on the power of the state. It is this limitation on the power of the state which protects private property, a fre

ket economy, personal liberties and promotes a noninterventionist foreign policy, which, if coupled with a strong nationaldefense, will b

ce and prosperity instead of war and welfare. It is not democracyper se which protects freedom.

many people living in democracies are lulled into believ-ing that they are free because they have the right to vote and elections are heldodically. If you take conscription for military service as an example, I think you would find that if it was proclaimed by a sole monarch, the d revolt and disobey.

ever, in a democracy, when the politicians vote for it, the people comply and still think they are free.

fall of the Berlin wall and the demise of the Soviet Empire do not assure us that collectivism is dead. I predict that the next assault on free new leftist intellectuals will be through the democratic process, maybe coupled with a religious movement, but certainly not coupled weligious ideas. Many, maybe most Americans, who opposed Communist Russia, were convinced it was wrong and evil because it wasistic and not because its political and economic ideas were wrong and evil. I think the new collectivist monster will be dressed in differeing advocating equality, justice, democracy, religion, and market socialism.

The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, Caldwell, ed., p. 209.


ELLECTUALS OF THE FUTURE

then be more important than ever for intellectuals of the future to have a correct understanding of the philosophy of individual freedom amarket economics in order to fight collectivism in the twenty-first century. It will be most important for Americans to understand why Ludw

es, in his book, Omnipotent Government, stated:

able peace is only possible under perfect capitalism, hitherto never and nowhere completely tried or achieved. In such a Jeffersonian wounhampered market economy the scope of government activities is limited to the protection of lives, health, and property of individuals a

nce or fraudulent aggression.16

he orator of the advocates of overnment omni otence cannot annul the fact there is but one s stem that makes for durable eace: a fr


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ket economy. Government control leads to economic nationalism and thus results in conflict.17

definition of a free market, which Mises states will allow us to have peace and prosperity, is one where the economy is not only free ofernment control, but also where economic interests do not control the government policy, especially foreign policy, which has been the cughout the twentieth century and continues to the present time. The highest risk for war is where various economic interests are able to cgn policy to promote their particular interests rather than the well-being and liberty of the individuals within a society.

udwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total Stateand Total War(New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1969), p

id., p. 286.

AHAM LINCOLN AND

FIRST SHOT

LMOST EVERY POLL of public opinion or assessment by professional historians which has been published since World War II, Presidham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt rank in the top three as two of our greatest.1 Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., who conducted the first prians in 1948, concluded that the ratings as to greatness were heavily influenced by a particular presidents connection with some turt in our history.2

oubtedly, the American Civil War and World War II were major turning points in American history and therefore greatly influenced the hgs of these two presidents. The position of greatness, however, necessarily assumes that neither of these presidents had any guilt in

hese wars. Instead, it is assumed that both presidents were peace-seekers, trying to lead the nation toward a reconciliation of its probleg to avoid a war until the enemy fired the first shot and forced an unwanted war upon these presidents and the American people.

Roman lawyer Cicero struggled with the question of what is a just war, as did the Christian philosophers of the Medieval 1Robert MurraH. Blessing, The Presidential Performance Study: A Progress Report, Journal of American History70 (December 1983): 535.

d., p. 553.


od, from Augustine to Aquinas. Later, the father of international law, the Dutchman Hugo Grotius, addressed the question also because cerned that wars which Christians might fight would be done with a clear conscience toward God. As a result of these developing ideastern political leaders have tried to convince their citizens or subjects that their wars met one of the main criteria; that is, that the wars we

ensive. President John F. Kennedy declared in January 1961 that Our arms will never be used to strike the first blow in any attack. . . .

nal tradition.3 It has always been important to American presidents to try to demonstrate that the enemy fired the first shot and started

se who support the mythology that surrounds Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt have tried to resist the nagging question which continues toabout whether these presidents actually maneuvered the enemy into firing the first shot in order to produce wars that they wanted but th

ple did not. In both cases, war caused great power and prestige to flow to the presidency, and most of the imagined greatness of thesidents therefore arises from their perceived conduct as war leaders and protectors of American liberty and rights. I will first address thstion concerning the Lincoln administration and in a subsequent chapter will examine President Franklin Roosevelt.

etheless, the question in regard to both is whether they provoked the enemy into firing the first shot.

t wars are fought for economic reasons, but the general population will rarely rally around the flag for such causes; therefore, other reasoally given for the purpose of any war, in order to persuade mothers and fathers to send their sons off to an uncertain future which could vey result in their return in body bags. For this reason, both the Civil War and World War II have been clothed in a mythology which states tWar was fought for the purpose of abolishing slavery and World War II was fought to oppose tyranny or Fascism.

hard N. Current, Lincoln and The First Shot(Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1963), p. 7.

AHAM LINCOLN AND THE FIRST SHOT

investigation of why the South fired the first shot at Fort Sumter raises the question of whether the firing on Fort Sumter by the South staor whether there were preceding, provocative, and precipitating acts on the part of President Lincoln and his administration which caush to fire first.

of the essential reasons the South wanted out of the Union was to avoid economic exploitation by the North, and one of the main reasohern political and economic interests refused to allow the South to secede was that they wanted to continue this economic exploitation. -standing dispute over slavery that existed between the North and South was not whether slavery should be abolished where it already e

rather, whether slavery should be expanded into the new territories and new states. The small but vociferous band of abolitionists in the e the only ones calling for the abolition of slavery where it already existed and this could have been accomplished through the secession


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h.

abolitionists argued that secession would relieve the North from the obligation to enforce the fugitive slave clause in the Constitution, whired the North to return slaves. Both Horace Greely, owner of the New York Tribune, and the abolitionist Harry Ward Beecher said, Leth go.4 The abolitionists, however, were very unpopular in the North, primarily because secession was not a popular issue there just befWar, although it had been in previous times.5 The concern of the North was that if slavery was expanded into new states, the South wou

e representation in Congress in both the House and Senate, thereby allowing the South to protect i tself from economic exploitation.

A. Swanberg, First Blood: The Story of Fort Sumter(New York: Charles Scribeners Sons, 1957), p. 155.

e David Gordon, ed., Secession, State and Liberty(New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1998), which covers the subject ofssion in America thoroughly and shows that both the North and the South had championed this right and both had threatened to secederous occasions before the Civil War.


story of the cause of the Civil War goes all the way back to the Constitutional Convention in which one of the major disputes was whetheple majority vote or a two-thirds vote would be required for the passage of the Navigation Acts, which included the tariff legislation. Bothof the adoption of the Constitution and the Civil War, the tariff constituted the primary revenue (more than 80 percent) for the federal

ernment.

rge Mason, one of the Virginia delegates to the Constitutional Convention, argued for a two-thirds vote as follows: If the Government is tng, it must be founded in the confidence and affections of the people, and must be so constructed as to obtain these. The Majoritywill b

erned by their interests. The Southern States are the minorityin both Houses. Is it to be expected that they will deliver themselves boundto the Eastern States, and enable them to exclaim, in the words of Cromwell on a certain occasionthe lord hath delivered them into o

ds.6

ow Virginia delegate James Madison, who was a strong supporter of the Constitution and, in fact, is known to us today as The Father ostitution, resisted Masons request for a two-thirds vote and argued that there would be no exploitation of the South if there was a simpority vote to enact tariff legislation.7 The final draft of the Constitution that was approved in Philadelphia had only a simple majority requiariff legislation, and Mason refused to sign the document. One writer, in analyzing this dispute over the tariff between Mason and Madisoh later became the most important cause of the American Civil Warshows that Mason continued his opposition to 6Gaillard Hunt and

wn Scott, eds., The Debates in the FederalConvention of 1787 Which Framed the Constitution of the United States ofAmerica (BuffPrometheus Books, 1987), vol. 2, p. 485. Also see p.

for Masons statement about the two-thirds vote and p. 582 for his refusal to sign the Constitution along with Randolph and Gerry.

d., p. 485.


Constitution in the Virginia ratification convention by continuing to demand a two-thirds vote on any tariff legislation.8

e time of the adoption of the Constitution, the North had a larger population than the South, but there was an attempt to compensate for nting a fraction of the slave population as part of the total population for determining representation in the House of Representativesa became known as the federal ratio. One of the reasons the Northern politicians opposed slavery was that it gave the South too much er. Another factor was that the North quickly adapted to the Industrial Revolution which had started in England and then crossed the Atlasing the North to become more industrial than agricultural by 1820. The new industrial jobs caused a rapid increase in the population of h, which gave it much more representation in the House of Representatives, but this factor was partially balanced by the practice of admnew states at a time with one being a slave state and the other being a free state so that representation in the Senate remained equal.

South also sought to protect itself by sending its most prominent citizens to Congress and by a close cooperation with Northern Democ

e K.R. Constantine Gutzman, Oh, What a Tangled Web We Weave . . .: James Madison and the Compound Republic, Continuity: A

istory22 (1998): 24.

ur own day, with the NAFTA and GATT controversies, we have been reminded of the potentially contentious nature of trade arguments. Iisons day, such disputes were even more contentious, even more acrimonious. Especially after Henry Clays American System spee

4, in which the Kentuckian frankly admitted that his program was an intersectional transfer of wealth, tariff arguments were potentially vio

on predicted in Philadelphia that the requirement of a bare majority for the enactment of tariff legislation would lead to Northern exploitaSouth of the kind Clay later made famous. Madison immediately issued a long declamation on the impossibility of such a turn of events.


824, Kentuckian Henry Clay made his famous American System speech and frankly admitted that the tariff should be high enough to p


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erican industry from manufactured imports from Europe, primarily England. A tariff levied on an import could be made high enough thathaser would be better off buying the Northern-made product. As the South was almost entirely an agricultural region, it had to buy almosanufactured products either from Europe, and pay the protective tariff, or from Northern industries, and pay, in most cases, an excessiv

ut three-fourths of the total tariff collected in the U.S. was paid by the Southerners. Another development which began to divide the Northh was that the political power of the North also allowed it to keep a vast majority of the tariff revenue and use it for internal improvementuilding harbors and canals, which was, in effect, a corporate welfare program. The North claimed a right to do this under the general wse of the Constitution, but the South objected, stating that this was an incorrect understanding of the meaning of this clause. Internalovements were also a major part of Henry Clays American System, which in reality was a partnership between government and the bests in the North.

828, the North had enough political power to pass an extremely high protective tariff, which became known as the Tariff of Abominationso the nullification movement in South Carolina in 1832 under the leadership of John C. Calhoun.

h Carolina declared that the tariff was nullified or void in the state of South Carolina; however, a subsequent reduction in the tariff by Coed the problem temporarily. Charleston, South Carolina, was the primary focus of this entire battle because this was where most of the collected, and Fort Sumter, manned by federal troops, constituted the means for enforcement of the collection of the tariff. The tariff con

e an extremely hot issue between the North and South up to the Civil War, with Henry Clay being both an instigator and pacificator of thehis death in 1852.9

r a full discussion of the tariff issue, see three books by Charles Adams, For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course ofization,38


new Republican Party, which had only come into existence in 1854, adopted a platform in 1860 that explicitly called for a high protectivnternal improvements and, therefore, was a direct threat to the South. Lincoln fully subscribed to this platform before and after his presination by the Republicans. Lincoln won his election with less than 40 percent of the popular vote, carrying only eighteen of thirty-three s

he did not have a single electoral vote cast for him in the South. While Lincolns position on the tariff and internal improvements was annous economic sign, the South still had hope that Lincoln would not oppose secession. During Lincolns one term in Congress, he had bal opponent of the Mexican War of 1846 and had supported the right of secession as a way of protesting the war. The threat of secession asserted, not only by the South because of the tariff, but by the North, especially New England, on numerous occasions: in 1803

the Louisiana Purchase, at the Hartford Convention in opposition to the War of 1812, and then again, at the time of the Mexican War.10oln proclaimed his strong endorsement of the right of secession in 1847 as follows:

people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, 2nd ed. (New Y

ison Books, 1999), pp. 32943, Those Dirty RottenTaxes: The Tax Revolts that Built America (New York: The Free Press, 1998), ppand When In The Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case forSouthern Secession (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000). S

Kenneth M. Stampp,And the War Came: The North and the Secession Crisis,18601861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University0), pp. 2, 4, 4344, 16164, 23138. Finally, see Phillip S. Foner, Business and Slavery:The New York Merchants and The Irrepress

flict(Chapel Hill, N.C.: Duke University Press. 1941), pp. 275305.or a full discussion, see Donald W. Livingston, The Secession Tradition in America, pp. 133, and Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Yankee

federates: New England Secessionists Movement Prior to the War Between the States, pp. 13553, in David Gordon, ed., SecessionLiberty(New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1998).


form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate th

the election of 1860, the new Republican Party was very much a minority in both the House and Senate, and it claimed only one Suprert justice. This new political party was made up of some abolitionists and former Democrats, but mostly former Whigs like Lincoln, who strong centralized government, a high protective tariff, internal improvements, a loose interpretation of the Constitution, and a partnerseen big business in the North and government that would allow business to expand westward, and even to other countries, if necessary

oon as Lincoln was elected, attention again focused on South Carolina because of the tariff issue. There were three federal forts in therleston harbor, but Fort Sumter stood squarely in the middle of the channel and constituted the main weapon for enforcement of the tariffuld South Carolina secede, i t would be imperative to reclaim the fort. At the time of South Carolinas coming into the Union, it had madeeed of trust of the land and Fort Sumter to the federal government. Because the fort also provided the ultimate defense from invasion of tor, whoever controlled Fort Sumter would control Charleston, a key Southern city.

December 9, 1860, all the congressmen from South Carolina met with President Buchanan in Washington and got a verbal pledge fromhe would not make any move to reinforce Fort Sumter.12 Unknown to the South, President-elect Lincoln, who would not take office until861, communicated directly on December 12, 1860, with General Winfield Scott, head of the army under the Buchanan administration,

to be sure to hold and retake all federal forts in the 11John Shipley Tilley, Lincoln Takes Command(Nashville, Tenn.: Bill Coats, 1991)

hasis added.

id., p. 121.


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h.13 Soon thereafter, on December 20, South Carolina became the first state to leave the Union. Six days later, Major Anderson, on hitive, moved his federal troops into Fort Sumter from Fort Moultrie, a nearby military installation.

e was an immediate uproar throughout the South, and Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi asserted that this was an overt act of warof President Buchanan, who indicated truthfully that he had not authorized this reinforcement of Fort Sumter.14 Governor Pickens of So

olina complained to President Buchanan and again received assurances from him that there would not be any further reinforcement of aouth Carolina, and especially Fort Sumter.15

or Anderson wrote a letter to his commanding officer in Washington on December 26, 1860, reporting that he had one years supply of h

es as well as food provisions for about four months, which would be through April 26, 1861.16 This food supply was that which was avaSumter, but Anderson quickly developed a good relationship with the mayor of Charleston and other local Charleston merchants, so thapoint on, he was getting daily supplies from grocers and butchers. Therefore, Anderson was in no danger of lack of food supplies from tt up until just a few days before the firing on Fort Sumter. Also, following Andersons move to Fort Sumter, Secretary of War Floyd resigng that Andersons action was an act of bad faith on the part of the Buchanan administration which he could no longer support.17

re continuing with the full story of Fort Sumter, it is important to look at the other key fort that was a focal point of dispute between the Noh at this timethat is, Fort Pickens in Pensacola Bay, Floridabecause this also sheds light upon Lincolns intentions and actions at Fter. While Fort 13Ibid., pp. 10506.

id., p. 110.

id., p. 122.

id.

id., p. 126.


ens was not a primary tariff collection port, i t was an essential military installation for the Southern part of the United States and for thefederacy. The state of Florida seceded from the Union on January 10, 1861, and through its former U.S. senator, Stephen Mallory, and ernor, made an immediate demand upon President Buchanan on January 15, for the return of Fort Pickens and the immediate evacuatioral troops. After much discussion and threats from both sides, the state of Florida and the Buchanan administration entered into a formanuary 29. The agreement was that if there was no reinforcement of Fort Pickens by the North, then the South would not fire upon the ford allow time for the parties to attempt to work out their other differences.

Lincolns inauguration on March 4, 1861, he violated this truce by issuing secret executive orders on March 11 and 12

nd reinforcements to Fort Pickens. The order was actually signed by General Winfield Scott, who kept the same position in the Lincolninistration as he had in the previous administration as head of the army. When Captain Adams of the U.S. Navy, who was in charge of ens, received the order from General Scott in March 1861 to send out boats to pick up reinforcements on the warships that were near tor, Adams refused to obey the order. Adams was very familiar with the terms of the truce and thought there had been some misunderstae new administration. He knew this reinforcement was an explicit violation of the agreement without any provocation on the part of the S

ully realized that this act alone would start the war.

hermore, as a captain in the navy, he was unwilling to take an order from General Scott, who was head of the army, so he sent word bacanted clarification from his naval commander.18

April 1, President Lincoln issued a series of secret executive orders, some over his name and some over the name of Secretary of the N

eon Wells, to send troops to reinforce Fort 18Ibid., pp. 4852.


ens. Captain M.C. Meigs was present in the office of the president when he issued these orders, and Meigs wrote a letter dated April 6h he explained his reaction to the events he had observed on April 1.

e the mere throwing of a few men into Fort Pickens may seem a small operation, the opening of the campaign is a great one. Unless thement is followed up by the navy and supported by ample supplies . . . it will be a failure. This is the beginning of the war.19

tain Meigs clearly saw that the act of reinforcement was an act of war and violated the truce that existed between the United States andthe Confederacy), and that war was being started secretly by the act of the president without any consultation with Congress. The wars

e to Pensacola harbor, but because reinforcement actually did not take place until the night of April 12 under the complete cover of darknot perceived by the South until the next day.20 Negotiations continued, however, after the South discovered the violation of the truce, aary commanders were still exchanging communications until April 17, before any shots were fired.21


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r, after the war had started and Lincoln had addressed Congress on July 4, 1861, Congress made a written inquiry dated July 19, requuments about the armistice at Fort Pickens.

ident Lincoln replied by sending Navy Secretary Wells to Congress with a written message dated July 30, in which the president declinuce any documents, claiming executive privilege, and stating it is believed the communication of the information called for would not, a comport with the public interest.22

id., p. 63.

id., p. 66.

id., p. 75.

id., p. 92.


rning now to the developments at Fort Sumter, a major event occurred there on January 9, 1861. Without prior notice to or knowledge o

erson at Fort Sumter, a merchant ship named Star of the Westentered Charleston harbor and headed toward Fort Sumter. It had been e South, just prior to this event, that hidden below the deck were two hundred armed soldiers with ammunition, and supplies; therefore, h Carolina troops fired a shot across the bow as a warning to the ship, which then reversed i ts course and left the area. Secretary of Int

mpson resigned his position in the Buchanan administration over this incident, saying that it indicated bad faith on the part of thenistration.23 President Buchanan again claimed that the event occurred without his authority, but actually he had authorized the attemptorce and then unsuccessfully tried to revoke the order.24 On January 12, Governor Pickens of South Carolina again demanded the retuort, but President Buchanan stated he had no authority to do so.25 Even though the fort had been a gift from South Carolina to the Unio

olina was willing to pay fair-market value for all of the land and improvements in exchange for its return and the evacuation of the federal

ernor Pickens at this time made it clear to President Buchanan and his administration, a position which soon became public knowledgefuture attempt by any ship to provide reinforcements would immediately cause South Carolina to fire directly upon the ship and Fort Sumin the discussions with President Buchanan, it was pointed out that simply the act of sending the ship for reinforcement was an act of wd not be tolerated.27

id., p. 156.

wanberg, First Blood: The Story of Fort Sumter, pp. 121, 123, 127, 145.

ley, Lincoln Takes Command, pp. 14951.

id., p. 152.

id.


February 4, the Confederate government had taken over jurisdiction of all federal property still located in the South, which included both ter and Pickens.28 On February 6, President Buchanan also reaffirmed the armistice in regard to Fort Pickens to the effect that there w

urther reinforcements. As he had earlier indicated, this was also the case at Fort Sumter. In return, the South would not fire on either fort o reinforcement was attempted.

February 7, retired Navy Captain Gustavus Fox approached the Buchanan administration and General Winfield Scott, in particular, with et plan to reinforce Fort Sumter successfully. It called for a nighttime maneuver involving several tugs to go first, pulling whaling boats ful

supplies, and then several warships with more troops to follow. General Scott presented Fox and his plan to Secretary of War Holt, whoplan, but on the next day Scott informed Fox that any plans to reinforce Fort Sumter were being abandoned by the Buchanan administra

March 2, President Buchanan signed the Morrill Tariff into law, which was the highest protective tariff in American history, and by early 1hed the average amount of 47.06

ent.30 The Morrill Tariff remained the cornerstone policy of the Republican Party up through the twentieth century. President Buchanan wPennsylvania, a traditional high-tariff state, and even though he was leaving office in two days, he wanted to protect his political career ng this act, which was popular in Pennsylvania but an ominous threat to the South. Two days later, on March 4, the nation waited with gr

cipation for President Lincolns Inaugural Address. Lincoln addressed the question of slavery directly and openly by quoting from one ofiously published speeches:

id., p. 154.

id., p. 153.

rank Taussig, The Tariff History of the United States (New York: Putnam, 1931), p. 167.


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ve no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to I have no inclination to do so.31

oln had also required each of his cabinet members to take a solemn pledge that they would enforce the Constitution, and particularly theve slave clause, which required the North to return fugitive slaves to the South.32 Lincoln specifically promised in his speech to enforcese. Furthermore, historian David Potter points out that:

oln returned, later in his speech, to the question of Constitutional protection for slavery in the states. He alluded to the proposed Thirteenndment, just passed by Congress, to guarantee slavery in the states, and added that, although he wished to speak of general policy, ra

specific measures, he would say that, holding such a guarantee to be implied in the existing Constitution, I have no objection to its beine express and irrevocable.33

ident Lincoln thereby completely removed the slavery issue from contention between the North and South by promising to enforce the fue clause and supporting a Constitutional amendment which would explicitly protect slavery. The protection for slavery had only been imporiginal Constitution in three places; that is, the fugitive slave clause, the ban on the slave trade, and the three-fifths ratio clause.

oln apologists often point to the following concluding gesture to the South in the Inaugural Address to prove that he wanted peace instea

avid M. Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995), p. 321.

ohn Nevin, Gideon Welles, Lincolns Secretary of Navy(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994), p. 311.

otter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis, p. 321.


ur hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. Yoe no conflict without being your-selves the aggressors.34

mythology which has surrounded Lincoln usually cites the above quotation as showing that Lincoln was doing everything within his poweent a war. However, immediately after his Inaugural Address, the South considered the speech to have been a declaration of war by Lin though Lincoln said nothing that threatened the institution of slavery in the South. Therefore, there must have been other words in his adh caused the South to consider that he had declared war. We find those words in his speech: The power confided to me will be used topy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be

essary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.35

ator Wigfall of Texas immediately notified Governor Pickens that the address meant war sooner or later, and in all likeli-hood, no time sost in sending reinforcements to Fort Sumter.36 Another prominent Southerner, L.Q. Washington, who was in Washington, D.C., and heess, forwarded to Confederate Secretary of War Leroy Walker a letter echoing Wigfalls opinion, which undoubtedly was shared with th

mbers of the Confederate cabinet. The letter stated: We all put the same construction on the inaugural, which we carefully went over togeagreed that it was Lincolns 34Charles W. Ramsdell, Lincoln and Fort Sumter, The Journal ofSouthern History3 (Southern Historicaociation, FebruaryNovember, 1937): 264.

arl Van Doren, ed., First Inaugural Address, The Literary Works ofAbraham Lincoln (Norwalk, Conn.: Easton Press, 1970), pp. 177hasis added.

ley, Lincoln Takes Command, p. 163.


ose at once to attempt the collection of the revenue, to re-enforce and hold Forts Sumter and Pickens, and to retake the other places.

believe that these plans will be put into execution immediately. I learned five or six United States ships are in New York Harbor, all ready. The United States steamerPawnee came here the other day suddenly from Philadelphia, fully provisioned and ready to go to sea.37

hermore, President Lincoln, in his Inaugural Address, repudiated his prior stand taken during the Mexican War that secession was a mable, a most sacred right of each state within the Union and proclaimed that no state upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of n.38 Later, during the war, however, Lincoln again recognized the right of forty-nine counties to secede from Virginia and to become th

e of West Virginia. The creation of the new state in this manner violated Article V, Section 3, of the Constitution, but nevertheless took py because of the pledge of loyalty of the residents of West Virginia. Of course, this added two new senators and additional representat

were all loyal to Lincoln.


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cordance with the resolution of the Confederate Congress, President Davis appointed three commissioners to negotiate with the Unitees all questions of disagreement between the two governments.39 The appointments took place on February 25, and reached Washingch 5, the day after Lincolns inauguration. The Confederate government was offering to assume its proportion of any federal debt and paket value for all federal property remaining within the seceding states.

o sought recognition of its independence as a separate government by the Lincoln administration. Davis had stated that the South simted to be let alone and constituted no threat to the existing government in Washington: We seek no conquest, 37Ibid., pp. 16364; emped.

otter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis, p. 322.

amsdell, Lincoln and Fort Sumter, p. 264.


ggrandizement, no concession of any kind . . . all we ask is to be let alone.40

ident Lincoln refused to see the commissioners, refused to negotiate any peace terms, and, furthermore, refused to recognize thefederate government. In regard to Fort Sumter, he continued to deal only with Governor Pickens of South Carolina. The commissioners r able to speak directly with President Lincoln; and, as will be shown in more detail later, their negotiations had to go through two U.S.

reme Court justices to Secretary of State Seward, who led them to believe that he spoke for the Lincoln administration.

nwhile, on March 9, President Lincoln asked his primary military advisor, General Winfield Scott, to investigate Major Andersons condSumter and advise him on the feasi-bility of reinforcement. The diary of Attorney General Edward Bates reveals that a cabinet meetingon March 9 to consider the desirability of sending reinforcements to Charleston. The army and navy military representatives presented ons, which were recorded by Bates with the following language in his diary: The naval men have convinced me fully that the thing can byet as the doing of it would be almost certain to begin thewar. . . I am willing to yield to the military counsel and evacuate Fort Sumterever, on March 11, as we have already seen, President Lincoln told General Scott to issue an order to reinforce Fort Pickens, which or

sed by Captain Adams. Also, on March 11, Senator Wigfall of Texas telegraphed General Beauregard stating that the opinion in Washthat there had been a cabinet meeting, and it had been decided that Anderson would be ordered to evacuate Fort Sumter within five da

March 12, Postmaster General Blair contacted his brother-in-law, retired naval officer Gustavus Fox, and took him personally to see Pre

oln in order to explain his reinforcement plan 40William C. Davis,A Government of Our Own: The Making of theConfederacy(New YoPress, 1994), pp. 34041.

ley, Lincoln Takes Command, p. 165; emphasis added.

id.


h had been rejected by the Buchanan administration.43 After hearing Foxs plan, as well as the recommendation of the military advisording Generals Scott and Totten, Lincoln called another cabinet meeting for March 15 and asked for each member of his cabinet to respng about what should be done regarding Fort Sumter. All the cabinet members opposed in writing any reinforcement of Fort Sumter, exmaster General Blair, who offered to resign from the cabinet when the Fox plan was rejected.44 Secretary of State Seward, who was gidered the number two man to Lincoln, consistently opposed any reinforcement of Fort Sumter because he thought it would initiate a wa

South. His written note to the president contained these words:

pose the expedition successful, we have then a garrison in Fort Sumter that can defy assault for six months. What is it to do then? Is it toby opening its batteries and attempting to demolish the defenses of the Carolinians? . . . I may be asked whether I would in no case, andadvise force

her I propose to give up everything? I reply no. I would notinitiate war to regain a useless and unnecessary position on the soilof theeding States.45

retary of Treasury Chase said in his note to the president: If the attempt will so inflame civil waras to involve an immediate necessity fotment of armies and the expedition of millions, I cannot advise it in the existing circumstances of the country and in the present condition

onal finances.46

retary of War Cameron advised against reinforcement with these words:

id., p. 166.

id., p. 167.

dgar Lee Masters, Lincoln, The Man (Columbia, S.C.: The Foundation for American Education, 1997), p. 392; emphasis added.

id.; emphasis added.


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tever might have been done as late as a month ago, it is too sadly evident that it cannot now be done without the sacrifice of life and treat all commensurate with the object to be attained; and as the abandonment of the fort in a few weeks, sooner or later, appears to be antable necessity, it seems to me that the sooner it is done the better.47

eron also stated that:

proposition presented by Mr. Fox, so sincerely entertained and ably advocated, would be entitled to my favorable consideration if, with

before me and in the face of so many distinguished military authorities on the other side, I did not believe that the attempt to carry it intd initiate a bloodyand protracted conflict. 48

retary of the Navy Wells opposed either sendingprovisionsor reinforcing the fort with troops and stated: By sending, or attempting to s

isions into Sumter, will notwar be precipitated? It may be impossible to escape it under any course of policy that may be pursued, but ared toadvise a course that would provoke hostil ities. It does not appear to me that the dignity, strength, or character of the governmenromoted by an attempt to provision Sumter in the manner proposed, even should it succeed, while a failure would be attended with untoster.49

ney General Bates opposed the plan with these words: The possession of the fort, as we now hold it, does not enable usto collect the

nue or enforce the laws of commercial naviga-tion. It may indeed involve a point of honor or a point of pride, but I do not see any great nest involved in the bare fact of holding the fort as we now hold it.50

id., pp. 39293.

ley, Lincoln Takes Command, p. 171; emphasis added.

asters, Lincoln, The Man, p. 393; emphasis added.

id.; emphasis added.


eral Scott and General Totten both appeared before the cabinet meeting, and Scott submitted a written memorandum stating his militaon. He not only opposed the Fox plan, but recommended that Forts Sumter and Pickens be evacuated immediately. He further stated ttain Foxs plan ofsimplymaking the attempt to approach the Fort with the ships will inevitablyinvolve a collision. 51 Scott further pohat even if the plan was successful, they would not be able to hold the fort for any appreciable time. General Scott stated also that thecuation of Forts Sumter and Pickens would strongly impress the eight remaining slave states that had not seceded and this might hold t

Union.52 President Lincoln received the advice both from the military officers and his cabinet and, with only one member of the cabinetporting the plan, it was determined not to implement the Fox plan since the mere attempt to initiate the plan would undoubtedly cause a w

rles W. Ramsdell, in his excellent study of all the official records and diaries of the people involved, also points out: One plan which he [Lms to have entertained for a short while, just after the adverse cabinet vote on relieving Sumter, contemplated the collection of customs evenue vessels

A Century of War - John Denson (96 Pages)

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